Growing up, my Mom was obsessed with having a perfect Christmas. (Sometimes she was so obsessed she made us all miserable, but that’s a story for another day.) She collected ornaments throughout the year, and hanging them on our real, natural tree every year was an important family ritual. She’d hand them to us carefully, telling the story of each one as we hung them, and she insisted that all her angels be near the top of the tree. Then, when after we were safely tucked into bed, she’d rearrange them because we kids had no artistic sense.

My own Christmas tree is fake, because real trees are beautiful pine-scented pains in the ass. It’s also technically not a Christmas tree, it’s a Yule tree. But just like my mom, I collect ornaments as souvenirs, and our tree is partly a record of places we’ve been. They’re an odd and tacky assortment but I’m quite attached to them, and I thought it would be fun to share a few.

Each one is from a different place. Most are places we’ve been, but a few are gifts from family in far off places:

These are from visits to my sibling in Baltimore. My son and I got the cannon in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, the owl is from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, and the crab is from the Baltimore National Aquarium.

These two are both from Arizona, where my mom and oldest sister live. The desert scene is from Tucson’s Desert Museum–my kids helped pick it out. The beaded one is, if I remember correctly, from the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

These are from different short trips. My oldest daughter picked the Mardi Gras mask on our trip to New Orleans, the desert scene is from an in-laws family reunion in New Mexico, and the M&Ms are from Las Vegas. I’m not sure which trip they’re from–Las Vegas is on the way to everywhere from where we live, so we’ve been a dozen times.

And more small trips. To San Antonio to help a friend with her baby, to Disneyland with the kids, and one from right around here.

And these were given us by family. The golden bell is a Japanese New Year’s ornament from when I lived there in high school, saved by my mom. Mom also gave me the bird; she sent it all the way from India where my parents were stationed. My brother sent the gnome from Oregon, where he and his wife have lived for years now.

Someday, when the kids are older and have Yule trees of their own, I’ll pass some of these on to them and their loved ones. And then I can start collecting all over again.